From a difficulty standpoint, I find Hardcore to be my cup of tea most of the time. I can play on Insane, but I have to be much more careful and methodical about how I progress through the level. I only play on Insane when I'm having a good day and I feel like taking a bit of a beating.

Keep in mind that I know most of the levels like the back of my hand and I still have a lot of trouble with Insane difficulty in many instances.

Even two guys in co-op in Hardcore can rack up a staggering number of deaths if you don't work together effectively... like trying to grenade tag every enemy you see when you've got a grenade (I'm a glutton for DBNO punishment). I spent most of today playing through Hardcore with one of the other level designers and we find many scenes to provide quite a challenge, even for two guys who are good at games and who know the levels.

Battlefield 2142 Demo Tomorrow? 11:17 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Action (0 comments)
Planet Battlefield has an interesting post from what appears to be an EA rep stating that there could be a BF 2142 demo released on Oct. 4th for people who pre-ordered the game from EA's downloader doodad.

Hi, Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts. If you have pre- ordered the game from EA Downloader, then only you can download the demo version of the game.

Note: The tentative release date for the release of the demo version of the game is 4th October, 2006. If you still have further concerns regarding the issue, please do not hesitate to write back to us.

Playstation 3 Overheating Problems? 10:34 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Consoles: PS3 (17 comments)
Sony shares experienced a 2.75% drop after Playstation 3s were seen having overheating issues:

"While the reason for this is unknown, we suspect it may be due to overheating as a result of enclosing the units and the high temperatures at the venue," analyst David Gibson of Macquarie Equities wrote. "We are concerned that such a problem has occurred so close to full production and is clearly negative news for the company."

"It's not a problem with the PlayStation 3 unit itself," Sony spokeswoman Nanako Kato said. "For a normal player at home, there shouldn't be any problem."

Age of Empires III: Warchiefs demo tomorrow 10:12 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Real-Time Strategy (0 comments)
Tomorrow Ensemble will be releasing a demo for Age of Empires III: Warchiefs:

The 517MB demo features the first two single-player missions that continue the saga of the Black family. There will be two playable factions to choose from--the Germans or the all-new Iroquois Confederation. Players' persistent home cities can be improved across multiple games as they explore the California coast in the colonial days.

Duke Nukem 3D on Xbox Live? 06:26 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Action (27 comments)
Probably not! It looks like 3D Realms tried, but Microsoft wasn't very interested. Recently, the service has been on a classic gaming kick, which makes it doubly disappointing.

"You'd be surprised what they've turned down. Don't just assume MS will want it just because you like it, and it's popular," he says. "Hate to sound defeatist, but it's not as easy as 'send it to Microsoft and get it on there'. It's a rather complicated procedure, and MS is fairly picky about what goes on there."

Scarface Review at Game Informer 06:14 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Action (4 comments)
Game Informer posted the first online review of Scarface: The World is Yours giving it an 8.5/10 score.

The biggest way in which it distinguishes itself from the pack is its focus on the economics and power struggles of being a drug kingpin. Unlike Grand Theft Auto, in which you're frequently at the mercy of powers much greater than yourself, Scarface allows you to blaze your own path to greatness, eventually restoring Tony Montana to his seat atop the Miami underworld. Starting out by pulling small jobs and slinging grams on street corners, you'll soon find yourself growing in influence, to the point where you're commanding an army of henchmen, numerous storefronts around the city, and cruising your seaplane down to the islands to move kilos. The epic scope and the sheer amount of money at stake gives Scarface a sense of urgency that few games in this genre have achieved. Greed is a powerful motivator, and I soon found myself wrapped up in the quest for bigger dollars, more glamorous cars, and all the ostentatious items that can be purchased in the game's Exotics catalog. Even better, employing henchmen like drivers or boat pilots allows you to call on any of your cars at any time - which beats the tar out of having to jack a scooter on the fly.

Medieval II Total War Min. System Specs 06:05 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Real-Time Strategy (7 comments)
Creative Assembly today revealed the minimum system specs you'll need to play Medieval II Total War (thanks Jeff).

Minimum System Requirements: English version of Microsoft® Windows® 2000/XP.
Celeron 1.8GHz Pentium 4® (1500MHz) or equivalent AMD® processor.
512MB RAM.
8x Speed DVD-ROM drive (1200KB/sec sustained transfer rate) and latest drivers.
11.0 Gigs of uncompressed free hard disk space.
100% DirectX® 9.0c compatible 16-bit sound card and latest drivers.
100% Windows® 2000/XP compatible mouse, keyboard and latest drivers.
DirectX® 9.0c.
128MB Hardware Accelerated video card with Shader 1 support and the latest drivers.
Must be 100% DirectX® 9.0c compatible.
Monitor must be able to display 1024x768 resolution or above.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Screenshots 05:20 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: MMOG (20 comments)
SOE sent over some new screenshots of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes showing off various outdoor venues in the upcoming massively multiplayer game.

(Click to Enlarge!)

Neverwinter Nights 2 Diary 05:01 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Role-Playing (2 comments)
Gamespot conjured up a new edition of its Neverwinter Nights 2 designer diary series. This installment is by Chris Avellone who discusses the story:

The story in Neverwinter Nights 2 begins with a series of brutal attacks in the Mere of Dead Men, including your home of West Harbor. These attacks begin to escalate up and down the Sword Coast, and you find yourself in the middle not just of a growing war in the Forgotten Realms, but a battle that has been raging across the dimensional planes for centuries. To make matters worse, you find yourself fighting wars not on just one but several fronts. There's the politics of Neverwinter and the challenges of fortifying your own stronghold, as well as enemies from Luskan in the North and the extraplanar githyanki that have declared a crusade on you. You find yourself locked in battle with all these factions, but you're in a position to play them off against each other to buy time and learn more of the events and history that led up to this conflict, and how to end it once and for all.

Flight Simulator X final demo 04:26 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Simulation (3 comments)
If you think you have a top-of-the line PC and want to really give it a test, consider giving the final demo for Flight Simulator X a little spin. Sounds pretty tame, but hey! The demo weighs in at nearly 800 mb.

Next-Gen Starts When I Say So 02:54 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Action (13 comments)
An unusually excitable Mark Rein was delighting the audience at GDC London where he talked about Sony's next-gen hype, Gears of Wars' impending release, some of Epic's top engine licensees and supporting those crappy Intel integrated graphic chips for UT 2007. Here's the poop on 'Gears:

The Epic VP then took the stage, commenting that Gears Of War ships in around 6 weeks, commenting: "We're trying to counteract all the hype the game has" by keeping a lot of the game features concealed and fresh. He also revealed that Gears Of War itself will take twelve-and-a-half hours to complete (not a recently cited ten hours, he made sure to point out), and that there is "plenty of replayability" after the fact.

Far Cry v1.4 Released 02:48 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Action (10 comments)
Ubisoft has released v1.4 of Far Cry for people who still play the game. "You can upgrade from the previous v1.33 or any older version, and this release adds remakes of assault maps, joypad support, security fixes, multiplayer improvements, gameplay tweaks, bug fixes and more."

Halo Wars Blog Update 02:43 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Consoles: Xbox 360 (0 comments)
Ensemble's Bruce Shelley updated his blog to talk a bit about Halo Wars (thanks Blue's News).

Halo Wars has been proceeding for months under the code name Phoenix. We have been working with the Bungie team closely to be sure that the vision for Halo Wars syncs up with their games and story. Our goal is to develop a full RTS game specifically for the X-360. We think X-360 gamers are ready for the RTS experience and the MGS leadership believes a quality RTS can expand the platform community. Our team specifically sees this as a cool challenge to take advantage of the technology, do something different, and open up a new genre to the platform.

The Halo Wars team is the fastest growing at ES right now. Much of The WarChiefs team is rolling over to it and many of our new employees are also joining. The team is being led by veteran ES producer Chris Rippy and Lead Programmer Angelo Laudon. Both have been with ES from the start, nearly 12 years ago. Angelo was Lead Programmer on Age I and Age II. The Art Lead is Mathew Goldman, an industry veteran with many titles to his credit from years at Bioware. Lead Designer is Graeme Devine, another industry veteran with 20+ years experience. We think the project is in great hands.

This game has a long way to go before being published and we won't be getting into too many specifics about it for a while. But it is being played every day now and we are feeling very good about where it is and where it is going. You can check on it at our Halo Wars community site here:

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Dev Diary 12:54 pm - Andrew Burnes - Games: Action (1 comment)
The latest Quake Wars dev diary is up on GameSpy's site, if you care for that kind of thing:

In the past, story-based immersion in multiplayer games was considered (not without reason) the inbred third-cousin to gameplay, not least because the majority of hardcore gamers disabled every possible graphics feature in the pursuit of frame rate and smoothness of play. During my clan and tournament days in Quake 1 and Quake 3, I did exactly the same. At that point, narrative immersion just got in the way of my fragging.

In 2002 we started development of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory for id Software, and we built on this idea of story-driven multiplayer by reinforcing each level with plot-driven objectives. There was even a radio transmission you could play in the Limbo Menu of a newsreel story outlining why you were there. These plots inspired the gameplay ideas of robbing a bank or escorting a tank to destroy a fuel depot, but they were still largely cosmetic from the player's perspective. The tactical objectives -- seen purely as game mechanisms -- could still exist in the absence of the plot.

Hardware & Tech Nuggets 01:30 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - hardware: General News (0 comments)

Boards

• DFI LANPARTY UT CFX3200-DR - HotHardware

  Cases
  

• Ultra's Aluminus Case Enlightens You - OCModShop

  CPU
  

• Fall IDF wrap: Intel eyes highly parallel processing - Tech Report

  Keyboards
  

• Logitech G11 Gaming Keyboard - GWN

  Memory
  

• Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5 2GB DDR2 Memory Kit - XYZ Computing

  Power Supply
  

• Corsair HX620w Modular Power Supply - Legion Hardware
• Corsair HX620 Modular Power Supply - Thinkcomputers.org
• Knowing your Power Supply - Tech Nibble

  Storage
  

• Hitachi GST Deskstar 7K160 - Tech-Hounds

  Video
  

• Biostar Sigma Gate 7300GT 256MB DDRIII - Overclockers Online
• MSI GeForce NX7600GT-VT2D256E HD - Viper Lair
• Radeon X1950XTX Duel - Sapphire & Visiontek - BootDaily
• Sapphire Radeon X1300 XT Overclocked Edition 256Meg - Tweaknews

RPG Vault Goodness 01:20 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Role-Playing (0 comments)

The Chronicles of Spellborn Peek #3 Spellborn International guides us farther into its online world by taking us through the first Trial Cave and beyond - Includes five exclusive screenshots

Previews Aplenty 01:15 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (0 comments)

• Alan Wake - TVG
• Battlefield 2142 - Hooked Gamers
• F.E.A.R. 360 - GameDaily
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance - PS2.IGN
• Portal - TeamXbox
• Scarface - Firing Squad
• Splinter Cell Double Agent - Pro-G
• Warhammer Online - Camelot Vault

Interviewage 01:10 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (0 comments)

• Carnage - Firing Squad
• F.E.A.R. Extraction Point - GWN
• Fountation 9 - Gamespot
• Scarface - Gamezone
• Showdown: Scorpion - Gry.o2.pl

Game Reviews 01:05 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (0 comments)

PC

• Caeser IV - 1Up - 6/10
• DEFCON - Eurogamer - 8/10
• Faces of War - 1Up - 8/10
• FIFA 07 - 3DAvenue - 3.5/5
• FIFA 07 - ActionTrip - 80%
• GTR2 - 1Up - 9/10
• Joint Task Force - Gamespy - 2.5/5
• NHL: Eastside Hockey Manager 2007 - Gamespot - 8.8/10
• ParaWorld - 1Up - 6.5/10

  360
  

• Doom - Atomic Gamer - 92%
• Import Tuner Challenge - Gamespot - 6.4/10
• Just Cause - TeamXbox - 7.1/10
• NBA Live 07 - TeamXbox - 7.1/10
• The Godfather - Game Revolution - C

  PSP
  

• NBA Live 07 - Gamespot - 6.8/10

In Other News... 01:00 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - In-House: In Other News... (28 comments)
Star Trek: Enterprise got picked up by one of the HD channels I get. I never really watched the series when it was "live" on the air, so they are 95% new to me. I have to say, I like the show a lot. I think they're picking up Battlestar Galactica too, so that's going to be sweet as well. I've seen all of those already, but it's awesome to watch them in high-definition.

Today's question was submitted by Andrew Mulvey:

What game(s) would you replay now if you were able to upgrade your machine with the latest cutting edge hardware?

You can learn more about the games at the official website.

EA Finalizes DICE Deal 07:05 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Action (7 comments)
EA announced that it now owns Battlefield developer DICE, lock, stock and barrel:

EA has been trying to acquire the studio since November 2004, but met with some resistance from DICE's shareholders. The deal moved forward in March 2006 as the two companies reached an agreement (pending two-thirds approval from general shareholders) making DICE the latest addition to EA's family of internal studios. Battlefield 1942 was released in 2002 and has gone on to be one of EA's most successful franchises, with the anticipated Battlefield 2142 scheduled to release next month.

Patrick Soderlund, DICE CEO, said, "Being part of the EA studio team is a great step forward that will help us continue to deliver new games and new franchises to DICE fans. We've been working very closely with EA for the past five years and this is a very natural step for us as we move into the next-generation of gaming."

Top 10 Best Selling US PC Games 05:12 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (9 comments)
Here's the latest top-10 best selling PC list in the US courtesy of NPD (by units sold):

1. The Sims 2 Glamour Life Stuff (Electronic Arts)
2. Company of Heroes (DVD-ROM) (THQ)
3. World of Warcraft (Blizzard)
4. LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (LucasArts)
5. The Sims 2 (Electronic Arts)
6. Company of Heroes (CD-ROM) (THQ)
7. Cars Radiator Springs Adventures (THQ)
8. Sim City 4 Deluxe (Electronic Arts)
9. Civilization IV (2K Games)
10. Age of Empires III (Microsoft)

Dark Age of Camelot: Labyrinth of the Minotaur Video 04:05 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: MMOG (12 comments)
Camelot Vault has the first Dark Age of Camelot: Labyrinth of the Minotaur video trailer up for your viewing pleasure. It comes in at 166 megs and runs over three minutes. In it, they show off some of the areas in the Labyrinth under Agramon, a bunch of different new monsters, the new mini-relics, some bosses and different classes of Minotaurs. Pretty cool stuff, make sure to check it out.

(Some screen captures from it)

Shiny Under New Ownership 02:29 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (14 comments)
Shiny (makers of a couple bad Matrix games, MDK and Sacrifice) are under new ownership. Atari will retain their original IPs, but the staff is going to be kept, and merged into the collective:

Foundation 9 Entertainment, the largest independent game developer in North America, announced today that it acquired the non-game assets of Shiny Entertainment Studio from Atari, Inc. in an acquisition funded by Foundation 9's recent investment from Francisco Partners.

"Shiny Entertainment fits well with the current studios of Foundation 9 Entertainment and aligns with our long-term goals for the future," said Jon Goldman, Chairman and CEO. "The studio has tremendous talent and experience working with big Hollywood franchises and will be working with us on a major, as-yet-undisclosed day and date release. The Shiny team will only add to our capabilities and technology base."

Under the terms of the deal, the Shiny team will remain intact and will co-locate with The Collective, one of the Foundation 9 studios, in 2007.

Gears Of War "First Impressions" 09:29 am - Elia 'Mithan' Doulia - Consoles: Xbox 360 (22 comments)
Eurogamer popped up first impressions of Gears of War today. Overall, the impression I got is that they really liked the game but felt the story and dialogue could use some work. Gears of War will be out on November 12 for North America and November 17 for Europe.

Occasionally your squad leader orders you to flank the opposition when they're too well covered to be taken out via the usual means. Far from being a scripted novelty, the quality of the AI in the version on show suggests that Locusts will use cover just as effectively as your own team, and working out a route to their weak spots will form a major part of your approach to combat from almost the first encounter in the game. In 25 minutes playing the opening portion of the game, it was apparent from the way you'd try to stalk enemies that Gears of War has a solid foundation for some epic encounters later in the game. Even in the early stages we'd find ourselves circling around a pillar, only to find the AI trying to do the same thing. Whether the Locusts work together to flush you out wasn't apparent, but they definitely liked to lob a frag grenade or two in your direction and chase after you when you tried to get away. If you do manage to get close enough to see the whites of their eyes, you can finish them off in some style - either with the gruesome chainsaw bayonet, or by shoving a grenade into their body, then making a run for it and taking cover!

Chris Morris On Episodic Gameplay 09:15 am - Elia 'Mithan' Doulia - Games: General News (23 comments)
Chris Morris, author of the regular CNNMoney Column titled "Game Over" has posted a new column today about episodic gameplay. There are also some interesting spoilers as well for Half Life 2 so you may want to skip the spoiler part...

Whether Valve will continue with episodic content after "Episode Three" hasn't yet been decided. The company knew its fans would likely buy the first installment regardless. But they don't know if players will stick with the formula.

"So far the feedback has been really positive and led me to believe we'll be continuing to do this in the future," acknowledged Newell. "But we want to get these three out, then sit back and do a post mortem. ... We're really interested in trying this, then sitting down with some customers and asking them 'Do you want a TV series or do you want movies - or a mixture of both?' It's like they've had a diet of feature length experiences for a long time and this is their first chance to try something different."

Poll: Pick your Favorite Platforms 03:15 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (28 comments)
This week's VE poll asks, Which Platforms do you Actively Play? Click each little box that applies (it's a multiple choice jobbie) then the vote button. You can pick more than one, but can only vote once.

Here are the results of last week's poll:

Most impressive technology?

Crysis [1966 votes]
Unreal Engine 3 [1474 votes]

Hardware & Tech Nuggets 12:49 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - hardware: General News (0 comments)

Boards

• ASRock ALiveXFire-eSATA2 - OCWB
• Asus P5W DH - Neoseeker
• Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 Motherboard - Maxit Mag
• Gigabyte GA-M59SLI-S5 Motherboard - Motherboards.org
• Motherboards that work with Kentsfield - Anandtech

  Cases
  

• NZXT Trinity case - Modders-Inc

  Cooling
  

• Corsair Nautilus 500 Liquid Cooling Kit - Future Looks
• Koolance EHX-1050SK External Water Cooling Kit - Virtual-Hideout
• Noctua NH-U12F CPU Cooler & NF-S12-1200 Fan - Bjorn3D
• OCZ Technology Tempest CPU Cooler - Virtual-Hideout

  Memory
  

• Crucial PC2-5300 10th Anniversary Memory - 3DGameMan

  Power Supply
  

• Antec TruePower Trio 650 Power Supply - Pro-Clockers

  Video
  

• The GPU Advances: ATI's Stream Processing & Folding@Home - Anandtech
• Low Profile Multi-Display Graphics on the Cheap - Toms Hardware Guide
• Sapphire Radeon X1300 XT Overclocked Edition 256Meg - Tweaknews

Interviewage 12:45 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (0 comments)

• Battlestar Galactica: Beyond the Red Line - Stargamer
• F.E.A.R. Extraction Point - Firing Squad
• Freeze Ops - Hooked Gamers

Game Reviews 12:20 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (0 comments)

PC

• American McGee Presents Bad Day L.A. - VE3D - 1.5/10
• Call of Juarez - GGMania - 75%
• Company of Heroes - Atomicgamer - 93%

  360
  

• Dead Rising - TTG - 8/10
• NBA 2K7 - Game Revolution - B+
• NBA 2K7 - 1Up - 8/10
• NBA Live 07 - Gamespot - 6.5/10
• NBA Live 07 - 1Up - 5/10
• NHL 07 - Xbox Exclusive - 77%
• Test Drive Unlimited - Tuscaloosa News - B+

  Xbox
  

• NBA Live 07 - Gamespot - 7.3/10
• Test Drive Unlimited - Gameslave - 8/10

  DS
  

• Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime - Game Revolution - B+
• Mega Man ZX - Gaming Age - A-
• Mega Man ZX - Game Revolution - C+
• Star Fox Command - GWN - 74%

  PS2
  

• Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA - Gamespot - 7/10
• Review: Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA - Gamepro - 4.25/5
• Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria - Gamespot - 8/10

  PSP
  

• Gangs of London - Gamespy - 3.5/5
• Gangs of London - Game Informer - 6/10
• LocoRoco - Gaming Groove - 9.5/10
• Rengoku II: The Stairway to H.E.A.V.E.N. - Gamespot - 6.4/10

In Other News... 12:15 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - In-House: In Other News... (27 comments)
I hope you guys had a great weekend!

Today's question is by JediPunisher, who asks:

What's your favorite Star Trek game?

You can find his big-list-o 'Trek games in this thread.

Personally, I'm hard-pressed to find any that I really loved. Some good ones are in there, but nothing really that great. Bonus question:

Why are Star Wars games so much better than Star Trek?